Officials with the People’s Party of Canada (PPC) have denied the party’s logo features a leaf from the invasive Norway maple, whose foliage was previously mistakenly used on the design of a commemorative coin plus the country’s current $20 banknote.
Botanist Jacques Brisson, who teaches at the Université de Montréal, told CTV News Montréal the erroneous use of the invasive Norway maple leaf (rather than the domestic sugar maple leaf) “has been done so often.”
A Norway maple leaf is shown on a one-ounce silver coin issued by the Royal Canadian Mint in 2003 plus the $20 banknote of the current “Frontiers” series by the Bank of Canada.
People’s Party of Canada representatives told CTV News Montréal the party’s logo features a domestic sugar maple leaf despite its appearance, which was altered due to design constraints.
PPC spokesperson Martin Masse, of Joliette, Qué., told CTV the party’s logo depicts the maple leaf as it is shown due to design constraints.
“The logo uses a stylized version drawn by one of our employees of a maple leaf that had to fill a round hole in the letter P,” Masse said. “Because of this, it does indeed look somewhat more like a leaf from a Norwegian maple than a Canadian maple. You sometimes have to adapt things a bit to meet such design challenges. The PPC sincerely apologizes to the arborist community for the psychological distress that this inaccuracy may have caused them.”